It’s been a while since I posted anything about Hapkido. We had an interesting class yesterday. A few new people, and work on the basics.A lot of Hapkido boils down to this concept of taking your opponent’s center of gravity – getting uke off-balance to your benefit. An interesting concept (and one that should have occurred to me before, srsly!) is of taking the center without alerting your opponent.I really need to start learning the terminology of this art – it’s getting hard to describe things without a vocabulary that’s up to my demanding blog standards. Heh. But anyway, we were working on taking your opponent’s balance from the back by putting your hands on his shoulders, tilting him just slightly, then encouraging him to fall. It was really amazing to me how much easier it was to accomplish when your touch was very light, almost like you’re touching something very fragile. I’d feel “the connection” sensei talks about and just be able to bring my hands down, and uke with them. I noticed a similar behavior on another technique later when thinking about the class.It’s hard to get used to this concept. I keep hearing myself say “that doesn’t feel like it should work” or “I know I’m trying too hard, but it feels like I have to”. Relaxation is at the core of this art – relaxation and simple principles of physics.